Kegler's Corner: Our final report of the 2013-14 league season

Longtime local bowling luminary, Roger Montavon, stole the thunder and propelled his team to take all the marbles in the fast paced Wednesday night Fraternal league at Hood River’s Orchard Lanes. Montavon rolled a perfect 300 in his first game of a four-team championship roll-off between round winners Electronics Assemblers, Van Cleave Design and the Amigos, plus Montavon’s Berries — the wild card team that took the most points during the season without winning a round.

That perfect start by “Sarge,” a multi tour veteran in Iraq, literally carried his team, Montavon’s Berries, to a 57-pin victory in the three game contest. Bowling for Montavon’s were Jeff Brittle, Roger Montavon and Pat Olson.

Congratulations to the champs of the high flying Fraternal league, the highest scoring league in the Gorge. By the way, that was Roger’s third career perfect 300 game, and he tossed it using a new ball that he’s been getting comfortable with for about two months now. While he was bowling that first game he told us that the ball didn’t seem to have quite the drive he expected. Obviously, that turned out to be a good thing and he may have a different opinion of it now.

Hats off to the Go-Granny-Go quartet, which won the second half of the Wednesday afternoon senior Colts and Fillies league. Go-Granny-Go beat the Snickering Seniors by a slim margin of only a couple of marks (2,482 pins to 2,461) in a three-game roll-off. Bowling for Go-Granny-Go were our favorite superstar nonagenarian, Esther Yarnell, Hood River Bowling Association manager Joyce Ebersole, spellbinder Lynn Spellman and the always dependable Jim Ebersole. These bowlers join the first half winner of the Colts and Fillies, Rock n’ Rollers, as co-champions of the league. This league is unique as they do not have a title match to determine an overall season champion.

Sadly, it’s that time of year again: time to put this league season to bed. It’s really been a good one; perhaps scoring was a bit more challenging than in the past, but that’s a good thing. It makes us work a little harder to succeed. After all, a little more practice never hurt anybody.

The top certified scratch scores for the 2013-14 season at Hood River’s Orchard Lanes included three perfect 300 games, rolled by Jeremy Bloom, Gordon Sim and Roger Montavon. The top series was a huge 805 that was notched by lefty all-star Greg McDaniel. These four scores all earned coveted awards from the United States Bowling Congress, the governing body of bowling. Greg also carried the high average in the city by a wide margin, finishing up at a flashy 224 pins per game. For our women bowlers, the top scores were a 288 game, 659 series and 195 average by all-star Mary Finley.

As we always do at this time of the year, we propose men’s and women’s all-star teams based solely on the top five averages for the season. Here they are:

This season, just for fun, we kept track of the number of times bowlers made the Team of the Week. Naturally, if you look at our all-star teams, it stands to reason that they would make the Team of the Week the most. And, that was generally true; Pat Olson and senior star Gordon Sim led with 16 appearances each. Gordon may not have made the All-Star team, but he had a great season that included a perfect 300 game and he averaged well over 200 in all of his leagues — 209 in the Lads & Lassies, 207 in the Colts & Fillies and 204 in the Industrial.

The real interesting thing about keeping track of who made the vaunted Team of the Week this season is that a total of 32 of our bowlers did it. That is really impressive because of the many outstanding bowlers here in the Hood River area. No less than 13 of our bowlers averaged over 200 which is an amazing number for such a small market.

n Starting up in the next few weeks will be a senior mixed and a golf-bowl league at the lanes. These are both fun leagues and they will help keep you sharp for next season. For more info on these leagues and other bowling activities this summer contact Orchard Lanes at 541-386-1326.